Sebastian Junger, famous for his narratives of war and dangerous jobs, began his talk in Scranton on Thursday night with a bar story.

A crowd of about 900 gathered to hear him speak at the Scranton Cultural Center as part of the Lackawanna County Library System's American Masters lecture series.

They listened as he told a story of drunken young men that served as a microcosm of the rest of his talk.

He recalled being in his early 20s, drinking at a bar in Pamplona, Spain, with a group of young Spaniards, one of whom was wearing a plastic Viking hat. In walked three young, tough-looking North African men, Mr. Junger said. These men accused one of the Spanish men of stealing the hat.

A fight began to brew, with both parties playing tug-of-war over the hat. Mr. Junger said he thought it might come to blows until one of the Spanish men brought over a bottle of wine and poured it into the plastic helmet.

Soon, he said, everyone was passing the hat around, sipping from it, until the former enemies were leaning on each other to keep from falling over.

This story, Mr. Junger said, illustrates what he had learned as a war reporter about the nature of brotherhood in a violent setting.

"The young male energy that leads them to war, that energy is almost identical to the energy that leads them to be brothers," he said.

Mr. Junger had plenty of war stories to share, many about Restrepo, the tiny base in the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan where Mr. Junger was embedded with a U.S. Army platoon - which included Milford native Sgt. Brendan O'Byrne - that encountered heavy fighting.

"It was sandbags, MREs and crates of ammo," Mr. Juger said of the base.

Brotherhood was a repeated theme throughout his talk, and he explained how he came to understand why soldiers who leave war often yearn for the situations that traumatized them.

After he finished talking, he took questions from the audience. One woman told the story of her son, who had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Another man asked that all the veterans in the room stand. They did, to applause.

Former mayor David Wenzel, who served in the Vietnam War, said Mr. Junger got it right.

Mr. Wenzel, 68, served in the Army in Quang Ngai from 1970 to 1971. He lost both legs above the knee and part of his left arm after stepping on a land mine.

No friendship is like the brotherhood forged by war, Mr. Wenzel said.

"When you're with a platoon, you're with them 24 hours a day," he said. "Your best friend from home, you don't spend that much time with him."

Contact the writer: bgibbons@timesshamrock.com

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